In 2006, the first Godfather game was released for the PC, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and the PlayStation Portable. (A Wii edition shipped the following spring.) The full-sized editions were largely the same, with players shaking down businesses in the street and fighting off rivals to take over territories, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas-style. The handheld spin-off, titled The Godfather: Mob Wars (pictured), went one step further, featuring card-based Risk-meets-the-Mafia gameplay in which players vied for control of New York City's five boroughs.

　　Although Mob Wars received only tepid reviews, it looks as if EA will be offering something similar--albeit presumably vastly expanded--in the Godfather II. At a Chicago investor summit yesterday, EA CEO John Riccitiello revealed that the publisher's Redwood Shores studio is hard at work on a second game based on director Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning Mafia film series. Though Coppola is no fan, Riccitiello was particularly excited about the game, lavishing praise on executive producer Hunter Smith for making a "spectacular" game.

　　"I think we'll be talking a lot about [The Godfather II] this fall," he gushed to analysts. "You can play this game both at the street level, much like GTA or a Vice City-style game, but you can also play from the top down, almost like an RTS. You can go into strategy in the boroughs, you can see what's going on, you play it in a different way, on a different level. It's a very differentiated gameplay experience." Riccitiello did not go into further detail, quickly jinking to other topics.

　　Contrary to widespread reports, Riccitiello didn't explicitly say that The Godfather II would have an RTS mode, merely that it would have the top-down view common to the genre. However, though rare, a crime RTS game is not unprecedented. The lukewarmly received 2004 RTS Gangland had armies of criminals conquering urban turf in a fictional 1930s city, drawing resources from gambling parlors, speakeasies, and other illicit operations.